Jesus Died for Our Sins?

From my post in fans of John Shelby Spong:

This is solely a hypothesis and is not formulated, researched enough to be a theory.  Somehow my current reading of Jonathan Blitzer's "Everyone who is gone is here" book is making me think about this.

For quite sometime, I have struggled with the notion that "Jesus died for our sins".  Having lost a child myself, I find this  notion that Jesus was sent here to die a hideous death for our communal sins, well, rather sadomasochistic. I have yet to meet a parent who has lost a child who is glad their child died.  The parents of a soldier killed in battle, for instance, may search for some purpose or meaning to their child's death, but they still grieve.

That in the background of my mind, Blitzer starts his book with an anecdote about Bishop Oscar Romero and his assassination in El Salvador in 1980.  Romero apparently was an advocate for the poor and for land reform in his country.  This advocacy and preaching caught the attention of the military leaders of the country.  They apparently thought that Romero could lead some sort of peasant/poor people's revolution that threatened their dominance and financial monopoly.

Is it not Paul who first proclaimed "Jesus died for our sins"?   Later, some of the gospel writers may have picked up on this.  The notion does not directly confront the Roman authorities or those others in Palestine who may have been complicit and benefited.

My hypothesis, thus, is that Jesus, like Oscar Romero, died because he spoke out for the poor and was perceived as someone who could rally the peasants against the Roman and other authorities who controlled the wealth, land, etc. of Palestine.

I am not sure how either Romero or Jesus died for our sins.  Sorry, Paul of Tarsus, who never actually met Jesus.  I disagree or at best am very doubtful. 

Apparently, Peter may have been too.  See Galatians 2:11-21.  Too bad Peter was illiterate and therefore we cannot read his side of that story.  Might have been interesting to be a cricket in the room when it happened though.